This waiting is seriously painful .. but, if it is of any help, I calculated approximately how many applicants are for this stage, and the figures are quite gratifying....

I extracted from my candidate number (submitted my application in the last days, respectively 26.08) and the last PREselected candidate number of the October applicants list.
The result is only ab. 4.600 people (I would say a MAX. + 200 marge of error should be included). This is ab. 3x less then in the October applicants stage!
If u think further, this means a little more than 50% chance to make it to the PRE

Hoping I shared a good news...
Cheers,
Csaba.

The last time my flatmate submitted the application in the morning at 9am on the last day (deadline was something like 3pm), the other one did it just before 3pm and the difference between their numbers was something like 2000 (within around 7 hours). It seems that everybody submits their applications in the very last moment.

Whaaat? No way... this hurts. Even tough the announcement isn't that far away now..this kept me from loosing my cool in all the waiting...starting to feel a lot of pressure right now..

Don't worry, I don't think that all the people that submit an online aplication also send it per post, some might be not eligible, many have poor education and language skills - people with good qualifications go through the preselection. It also depends on the country - I knew a guy who was in the selection committee or something like that and he said that for British citizens they had something like 2ppl per place and for Lithuanians or other new countries it might be more than 10. I guess it's also prette competitive from candidates from outside the EU.

Just to set records straight, there where ab. 10.000 applications.
That means, more than half of the applications arrived in the last 4 days before deadline!...wow.